Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor objected to the court's haste, saying it "highlights once again the perversity of executing inmates before their appeals process have been fully concluded."

Stevens, writing for the three, said Virginia had short-circuited the process by scheduling Muhammad's execution for Tuesday night, earlier than the court would normally have reviewed his petition for the court to take his case.

Not that they said they wanted to hear the case. They didn't. That's empathy for you.

I crossed paths with the black Muslim terrorist John Allen Muhammad during almost the entire weeks-long attack. I frequently patronized the Barnes & Noble next to the Home Depot in Falls Church where Linda Franklin was murdered. I literally ducked while I pumped gas at a station in Manassas.

T0M SPAULDING, WELL SAID. i too live in the VA area, and remember how freaked out everyone was, and how his murders devastated so many lives. So...he may have been a mistreated child, but he became an evil adult.

Did he do the crimes? Yes. Was there every indication of premeditation? Yes. Was he fully conscious of what he was doing? Yes. Were there any legal issues apart from chickenshit ones like declaring 'mental illness'? No. Okay, fry him. And may the Christ of God have mercy on his soul.

I don't think that the eye for an eye approach to justice can be applied without accidentally indulging perception. It's all very similar to gang warfare. Killing a person for an act of killing will just be percieved as killing a just man by anyone who believes in his cause or has attributed one to him....I'm not sure what the solution is, but executing a man certainly doesn't offer resolution and a 'legal process' doesn't exhonerate those involved in his execution from being a part of a process designed to take life.

"I don't think that the eye for an eye approach to justice can be applied without accidentally indulging perception. It's all very similar to gang warfare. Killing a person for an act of killing will just be percieved as killing a just man by anyone who believes in his cause or has attributed one to him....I'm not sure what the solution is, but executing a man certainly doesn't offer resolution and a 'legal process' doesn't exhonerate those involved in his execution from being a part of a process designed to take life."

Cynical person... do you have any idea how much of what you presented as undisputed fact is actually unsupported ideological belief?

That our "perception" is relevant when facts are known. That "eye for eye" is even an issue here... it's not. The man has only one life and took many. His execution is not "eye for eye"... it's far less. Gang warfare is rational in the *absence* of something to take it's place, which is the social contract between citizens and the state to refrain from seeking justice outside of the judicial system in exchange for the assurance that the judicial system will act in the place of citizens, thus avoiding anarchy and chaos. You assume that the feelings of those who like what this man did, matter. They don't. You've bought into a faith system that insists that everything is relevant to perception... it is not. Failing to act because some nutcase probably thinks this guy is his hero is moral cowardice. The families of victims who go to see this man die *will* have as much resolution as it's possible to have. The population that was terrorized *will* have resolution as they will know that the state is keeping up it's end of the "no vigilantism" social contract. And lastly... "taking a life" is sometimes a necessary social good that no one needs to be exonerated for. The people involved in taking this man's life no more need to be exonerated than the police officer who shot Hasan would need to be exonerated if he had died.